


the unattainable, the obvious

by sunshowerst



Series: danny and rusty and no one else on earth [4]
Category: Ocean's Eleven Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, Post-Canon, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Rusty is always eating, danny joins in on a job for REASONS, takes a bit to figure out what the reasons are tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29177295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshowerst/pseuds/sunshowerst
Summary: It's not exactly the thrill of the con that he'd been missing, Danny finds out, in the same room he finds Rusty in.
Relationships: Danny Ocean/Rusty Ryan
Series: danny and rusty and no one else on earth [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2128335
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	the unattainable, the obvious

**Author's Note:**

> im like on a roll it seems

Evenings like these were made for the low lights of Westchester county where money went to die and be divided by jackal relatives and their scoffed upon partners- unless it was stolen, of course, and that’s one thing Danny missed about working these jobs: Reuben’s ingenuity in picking targets that live in between acres of golf courses and parks, far enough removed from any semblance of a life that isn’t as stagnant as the water of their backyard lakes.

This one was in Scarsdale, and the bar he’d been told to show up in any time after nine was as predictably hideous as he’d expected it to be - Talk, it was named, and served to give the residents a taste of fifties nostalgia mixed with whatever they’d been convinced the proletariat indulges in on a night out, such as milkshakes and rum and coke, neither of which dated back to the 1800’s, which was scandalous and as much adventure as these people could bother with in their, well, stagnant lives.

His gaze trails over the women he'd nick the christmas gift necklaces off of with a smile and an absence of guilt, before Tess. Now he sees the cracks even from his corner seat, that start showing due to husbands that make them happy in a way they can’t turn down and move on from, and it’s a wholly sad, guilt infused ordeal. Like love was ever supposed to be about fairness and hair thin weigh ins and the sanctity of marriage, whatever. 

He wonders, not for the first time, and not for long enough to mean anything or be introspective in a way thieves can’t afford (no matter their millions, he thinks to himself smugly, cause smugness he _can_ afford)- wonders, how they do it. Wear Sunday’s best and care for bills at the end of the month and comment on their neighbors’ kid’s science medal and growth spurt and which of their geriatric neighbors it takes after. 

The job was hitting too close to what he’d dreamed up to be his home before that blew up in his face, unceremoniously and twice for good measure, and he was only here for the thrill of a new con. Maybe (probably) why Rusty picked this job in the first place. Maybe (definitely) even more so for Rusty, who didn’t know he was coming, who he didn’t catch a glimpse of in almost a year. Rusty, who’s sitting at the far end of the bar, working his mark for the night- a man, older than Danny is, with an Audemars Piguet on one wrist and Rusty’s fingers around the other, just as golden, and almost vulgar in the way they held on. 

He doesn't see his face properly from all the way over here, but he never had to see Rusty to know what he was doing at any given time. Eight months apart had nothing on the two decades worth of time they spent learning everything about the world from across each other’s shoulder. What face he was pulling, what his slanted smile looks like when schooled to please men who could afford to bribe God into looking the other way when they indulge in sodomy, at least by implication. At least emotionally, and never on Sundays.

He'll buy his wife sapphires tomorrow, Danny guesses (predicts) and swirls his Perignon in the glass. ‘Cause her favorite coat and pencil skirt set is either azure or seafoam blue (Tess regarded Panton like the people of this antique town regarded scripture) and their mark is the type to think the blues match, on the basis of them having the same color in the name. She'll thank him and wear them till they stop being a reminder of how much he loves her, and start reminding her of how much he doesn’t. 

Danny bought a necklace once, for Tess, at Cartier’s, after an attempt at a phone call that Rusty didn’t answer, because he was always a better man than Danny when it came to preserving things money can’t fill the cracks in. Like the vase his mom used to keep at the end of the staircase that had Danny tempting fate when jumping over it as a middle schooler. Like the marriage he pursued and chased after and stole for and acted part in, till he realized how insane it was to even begin to try and refurbish his personality and black tar soul to shine like a porcelain vase would.

Like the necklace did, in street light, before he chucked it in the trash and went back to his and Tess’ house for the last time. 

He snaps out of it when Rusty winks at him in acknowledgment - probably - and flashes a smile at the businessman that golfed more than he cheated on his azure or seafoam wife whose name must have been Barbara or Allison, and snaps back into it when the man's wrinkled hand falls onto Rusty’s thigh and squeezes delicately, like checking if he’s ripe, the one fruit he’ll savor eating in the bag of roughs he keeps buying to save face. Save fate, please God, keep the right to dissatisfy his wife, blue all over, like the successful man he is.

Danny wonders if his wife ever smiled, if she’s amiable or if she’d come down with the sort of stiff upper lip that pairs best with pearls bought out of infidelity. One of a kind, both of those. 

He could have a kid. In college by now, or working at his company because he had to feel like god, at least by the looks of it - Rusty was blushing on purpose, and that was a tell as good as any that the man was relentless and unaware of leagues above his own. 

The bar was exclusive, and lackluster all the same, and Danny was here unannounced and unaccounted for, but he drove in in a Porsche and the vallet's fingers shook when he passed off the keys so they let him in without prior notice. Which kind of proved his point more than the tacky red-and-white checkered ceiling did. (Crimson and ivory, God forgive him.) 

He sat alone and soon had to pretend to listen in on what the woman that came over to sit across from him was talking about. At first glance it’s obvious she’s here for an important meeting about stocks and bonds and other types of gambling Danny found cowardly cause they didn’t require being face to face with the money and odds. Like real gambling, like cons. 

Like Rusty, who he really wants to return his gaze to about now, cause it’s been a while.

She would have been interesting enough, in all fairness, a lifetime ago; with her auburn hair and bright lipstick and a knowing look that said she wouldn’t care for his money more than he does but it was an entry fee regardless. Reminded him of someone he got to know very well, that same lifetime ago. 

Her legs are long and subtly brushing against Danny's and he brings his eyes back up to her, from his wine, to see her looking in Rusty's general direction, and then raise her eyebrows and look at Danny - and, sue him for being obvious. She had to be good at math to be a stock broker. And experienced enough to know when adding two and two together decreased her odds significantly, so she didn’t comment. For the first time that night, Danny smiles, flashy and real, if only to take her breath away. 

She returns the favor by kissing him lightly, over the table, and he didn’t even catch her name, or remember what name he gave her, or if she even asked. She scribbles her number on a napkin - to save face, he knows - before leaving him sat there, playing up the act, pressing his fingers to his bottom lip and staring at her like she was the one Danny was here- in the bar and on earth- for. And that covers him for the night. 

They’re on a proper job too - Reuben let it slip and Danny owed him that as well because he needed to see Rusty again. 

Rusty, who’d just walked past him and bumped shoulders - and an hour later Danny finds him in his own unlocked room, reclining on the armchair and thoughtfully chewing on strawberry jam dipped churros he procured out of God knows where, in here due to having a passkey he procured out of Danny knows where.

He sighs and indulges him, patting his inner jacket pocket for the passkey that wasn’t there, and Rusty grins around a generous bite. Some innocuous storage box in Louisiana definitely has a portrait under a blanket that some art student painted of Rusty after sleeping with him when they were twenty, and it served to put the heartburn food pounds on instead of him all these years. That was Danny’s current best theory for the continued existence of Rusty’s enviable muscle definition, waiting on a peer review from Basher, probably.

The model in question licks his fingers, methodically, starting with the thumb he used to pop the last of his churro past lips that could pass for crimson with enough effort, and Danny wonders shortly what exactly that had to do with his heart hiccuping. 

"So you talked to--" 

"Yeah."

Rusty nods, his face blank again. Below it, his shirt reveals a tan you can’t buy (Hawaii job leftovers if Reuben was to be trusted this much, and he was), a shine of thin silver hanging from his neck and lean muscle jumping under the golden skin when his hand reached out for the coke can, thus far unaccounted for. 

Danny was just, wondering. That’s what this was.

"And of course you want--" 

"Of course," Danny nods to emphasize. "And she doesn't mind," Danny adds before Rusty can begin to wonder as well, "because it’s over."

He waves his left hand slightly for added effect and Rusty's eyebrows shoot up. Let it be known Danny still had a way or two of catching him off guard.  
The room goes quiet for a bit, and Danny sees his eyes flicker across the wall behind him, connecting dots. Rearranging details, hopefully. The view from the Langham is incredibly, underwhelmingly predictable. 

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"You're on For Love or Money. I'm just attending the yacht party instead, in this one. Everything else stays the same. Next Tuesday."

Danny nods and his nerves sing, veins thrumming with adrenaline rush blood in every crevice of his brain that went underused and neglected for almost a year. 

"Welcome back, Danny," Rusty says, in his casual voice, and Danny feels himself mirroring his blinding smile. 

-

“Is Livingston on?” Danny asks the above the sink mirror. 

“Nope.”

“Wife?”

“Religion.”

Danny leans out the bathroom door to study his face, and Rusty shrugs in defeat. Follows it with a yawn - a different kind of defeat; stretches his back before settling down again, turning his face so the invasive city lights hit the back of his head, like a blue (teal, God be merciful) halo of an outline making him look all the more enticing, and Danny needs to sort himself out, really. Like the ring was a blindfold and he was hungry to see more, and all, and new. Like he’d never seen Rusty before tonight, or it took upwards of twenty years to process what he was really looking at this whole time. Like colors having names he didn’t bother to learn because they were indiscernible.

“Huh.”

Rusty hums in agreement and closes his eyes, sinking further into the armchair. Some things never changed, regardless of the viewer’s perceptiveness, like Rusty and his chronic lack of sleep. 

“So. Catholicism?” 

“Islam.”

Danny refrains from a second _huh_ in one night, and swears Rusty can sense it and that’s why he’s smiling now.

“That's new.”

“I know a few muslims who’d disagree.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm. Like, a billion and a half.”

“You know a billion and a half muslims?”

“Let me sleep, Daniel.”

He does as he’s told. Plucks his shoes off and throws a blanket over him when he'd dozed off, later, arms crossed over his chest. It hits straight to the heart, the sight he'd seen enough times to never forget it but never enough to be over it, never enough to give up the privilege of getting to see it anew. 

Rusty still trusts him enough to fall asleep around him. He feels younger by twelve years, from that alone. 

-

Tuesday comes and goes by and it’s just as they planned it out, every minute accounted for like only Rusty could manage and Danny could make sure it stays as such. Managed, that is. And they managed away well, seven figures they didn’t need as much as they needed the feeling right after getting to them, and the high that lasted for months coming off of it. 

They’re at a bar per tradition, one that’s miles off of Westchester and that much better than Talk, even with the crummy floors and invasive waiters that seemed too keen, or just a bit off. And whatever’s in his glass, green and red and summery doesn’t have nearly enough alcohol content to help him graciously handle a post-successful-job Rusty, who was on top of that already two thirds of a priority lane to wasted. 

He can’t not watch his every move, euphoric and jumpy and surging with energy and vigor Danny wanted-

He did want this, the most. Want him here. Didn’t he?

Maybe (definitely) he-

Oh. 

Oh, he _did_. 

His surgeon steady hands shake. He has to set his drink down. 

"You okay?" Rusty asks, serious all of a sudden, and Danny nods as casually as a man who’s just developing arrhythmia can afford to (he can’t). Rusty seems skeptical, leans closer, smells expensive and familiar, Christ. Lord Almighty. Danny does his best not to grit his teeth.

"You sure?" 

"Im fine, Rusty."

He doesn’t look convinced as of yet, but he shrugs a _later, then,_ and returns to his obscene show of eating ladyfingers and cream and ends up with some of it still on his bottom lip, a sugary crumb and the white on could-be-crimson and wasn’t that just perfect. 

"Say, do you-" 

Danny kisses him, and tastes the sugar and the vodka shots that got them all the way to here in the first place. 

Rusty hums a tiny surprised noise and hesitates to reciprocate, and Danny almost, almost fears that he somehow got it wrong. 

"’S not an act, Rus," he whispers and his lips almost brush Rusty's when they curve around the sentence, confession, truth in a sea of ones they never had to say because they were always in the open and waiting for either him or Rusty to catch wind of them.

"Oh," he breathes, and grins a second after. “ _Huh_ indeed.”

Seconds later, of a quick look into Danny’s eyes, from a breath and a letter o away, he presses his lips to Danny’s and this time it’s like every other thing Rusty ever cared to do properly. Intense, graceful. As hot as hell should be to live up to its name. His hand finds itself a new purpose, of getting every hair on Danny’s arms to stand on its end when it rests on the nape of his neck, pulling him closer. Slow, tantalizing, how their lips slide and slot together, like a plan unfolding towards an end they both can’t wait for, but everything before needs to play out in its order. The cons, the big and the small. The relationships, divorces, prison sentences, Europe. The waiter with their bill in his hand, clearing his throat, then blushing when Danny glares at him, and Rusty laughs, bright and breathless.

He knew where this would lead them, saw the promise in the curve of Rusty’s lips, not crimson yet- but, God willing, Danny will put in his best effort to make them so.

**Author's Note:**

> comments/critique/kudos and the good things that keep me going with these are always welcome! shout out to everyone that supported the previous one, this one goes out to you <3


End file.
